“Yun Zeru,” one of the men interrupted flatly.
“What?” Yun Zeru snapped. The man pointed silently at the bedside table. The top drawer had shaken open slightly with Helia’s dangling feet. Elara shook her head, trying to clear her vision as she followed their gaze to where the man was pointing.
A ring.
Elara bit her lip in dismay.
Her wedding ring from the future.
Yun Zeru’s eyes widened, his face darkening as he stared at the ring. He dropped the child, who scrambled towards her mother immediately. The man kicked the little girl down, and she fell with a cry.
“NO! Please,” Elara cried with the child.
Yun Zeru, turning a blind eye, reached slowly for the ring, examining it closely. Tawer…” he uttered. His head whipped back towards Elara, and then at the little girl, who was on the floor.
“Mama,” Helia moaned.
“Another Tawer?” Yun Zeru’s eyes darted back and forth between Helia and Elara, his mind racing.
Could it be?
“Who are you?” Yun Zeru demanded, his voice thundering as he turned back to the child and shaking her. “Stop sniveling and tell me, you brat.”
Helia, frightened, cried even harder. Her head snapped back suddenly as Yun Zeru struck her small cheek with his hand. “Mama,” Helia cried pathetically, “MAMA!”
Elara desperately broke through the hold that the other man had her in and snatched up the girl, only to be separated once again by the sinister Guardian. He picked up the little girl by her neck and began to squeeze. Helia’s voice began to gurgle as her windpipe was slowly crushed.
Elara had never felt so helpless.
Suddenly, the ground trembled beneath their feet. Elara felt the tremors run up her legs and looked around, confused. Yun Zeru and his goons had a similar, puzzled look on their faces as they felt the ground shake beneath them. Water spilled out of the ground and rushed around Yun Zeru’s feet, powerfully swirling around his legs and throwing him off balance. He whipped his head to look at Elara, and then back at Helia.
The toddler’s face was blood-red, and her eyes were rolled back in her head. Yun Zeru dropped the child in shock. “An… An Elemental? It’s true?”
Elara took her chance and dove forward, scooping her comatose daughter from the floor. She bent over and dashed towards the open window, and throwing herself out of it, Helia grasped tightly in her arms. She fell flat on her back, bracing herself for the impact and cushioning Helia from the fall. She wheezed and groaned as the wind was knocked out of her lungs.
“Get them! Get the Elemental!” a voice called from the window above her.
Elara mustered up every bit of strength she had left and pulled herself off the ground. Without casting a second look behind her, she ran as fast as her legs could carry her.
THE ELEMENTAL
Elara staggered towards the thick, wooden door, her injured shoulder screaming with the weight of Helia in her arms. She banged on the front door, sobbing with a mixture of relief and pain as her knees crashed against the stone floor. Tears flowed freely down her cheeks, and Helia bawled loudly, her cries piercing the early morning sky.
The door swung open, and Elara looked up to see Noiro staring down at the two of them in horror.
“Elara!”
“Get her inside,” Elara panted, desperately pushing the toddler across the threshold.
Noiro moved quickly, kneeling down and scooping up the crying toddler.
“Help me,” she uttered weakly, reaching for Noiro’s arms as he hoisted her up to her feet and brought her inside. He locked the doors and windows, scrambling across his cottage in a frenzied panic.
“What happened?” Noiro’s voice shook. “Where? Tell me.” With the blood soaking through her shirt, he couldn’t tell where the wound was.
“Yun Zeru,” Elara sobbed, answering his first question.
“What?”
“He broke in… He… I…” Elara couldn’t hold it in any longer, falling to pieces as she wept uncontrollably. Her head whooshed as she cried, and she felt lightheaded. It felt like a white hot iron was lodged in her shoulder, and she pressed her hand to it.
“We need to get you looked at,” Noiro said worriedly. “We need to go to a Medic—”
“No,” Elara’s face paled. “No. They’ll take a report. It’ll raise red flags. We can’t tell them what happened… Yun Zeru…” Elara’s voice was beginning to sound delirious as the shock began to take over her body.
“What happened?” Noiro asked again. He led her to the couch, gently pushing her to lie down.
“Bad…men…” Helia managed to gurgle between shuddering wails.
“He had others with him. I counted at least two.” Elara shuddered. “We have to hide. What if I led him here?”
She tried to get up, but he pushed her firmly back down. “Lie down,” he said softly.
Tears rolled down her cheeks. “It’s not safe.”
“We need to take care of you first. I… I don’t know much beyond first aid.”
“Tami,” said Elara. “She can help us.”
“Dad,” Helia whimpered. “I want Dad.”
“Okay. Okay.” Noiro moved quickly to his office. “I’ll have them over.”
He emerged with a small first aid kit, and pressed some gauze to Elara’s shoulder. The bleeding had already slowed, but they needed to treat it properly and address the extent of the damage. Elara winced, hissing as the gauze pressed hard onto her wound.
She lay there, shivering under the blanket that Noiro had brought her, Helia still crying beside her in fright. Her eyelids fluttered, and she felt very sleepy as the adrenaline began to fade from her body. She groaned in pain, the impact her injuries becoming more potent as the time passed.
After some time, she could hear muffled voices drawing closer to her.
“Elara? What happened?”
She turned her head towards the voice, and squinted through blurry eyes to see Tami standing there with her eyes wide and panicked.
“Elara! Helia!”
“DAD!”
Elara heard Argon’s footsteps thundering towards her, bursting through Noiro’s front door. He raced to their sides, collapsing to his knees, encircling his arms around them both.
“Move, I have to check her,” Tami ordered, pushing past Argon.
“Check Helia,” Elara croaked, her throat dry as she tried to sit up.
“Of course I’ll take a look at her. But you’re much worse off right now,” she said softly. “Let’s take a look.”
Helia clung tightly to the safety of her father’s arms as he reluctantly moved away from Elara, giving the medic room to examine her.
He whirled around to face Noiro, Helia tucked in his arms, his eyes blazing furiously. “What happened?” he demanded again.
“I’m not sure,” Noiro said, feeling completely at a loss. “They showed up like this. Yun Zeru, and at least two others—they broke into her place.”
“Oh God, El.” Argon’s face contorted with fear and concern.
“We need to gather everyone. We’re not safe… Helia…” Elara uttered, wincing as Tami began disinfecting her wound.
Just as she spoke, she heard Miela’s thick boots clomping against the floor as she ran into the house. “Elara!”
“They were attacked,” Argon explained shortly, shifting Helia’s weight in his arms. “Yun Zeru.”
“What?”
“They were—”
“I heard you.” Miela’s nostrils flared as anger flooded through her. She put her hand on her sword. “We need to go and—”
“No,” Elara said heatedly. “No one is going anywhere. We need to discuss—”
“The time for discussing is over, Elara,” Miela fumed. “You could have been killed. And it’s apparent that he’s not afraid. But he’s not powerful, yet. We can—”
“I know what he’s after,” said Elara. She grimaced as Tami attended to her wound.
&nb
sp; Tami turned her head around, her hands still focused on Elara. “You’re all going to have to wait,” she told them. “I need to bring her in. We need to stitch her up.”
“No.” Elara shook her head. “No. You don’t understand, Tami. We can’t. They’ll be looking for us…”
“You need—”
“Please, Tami. Just do what you can,” she begged. Tami looked at her old friend, her eyes meeting defiant, tear-filled ones. “Please.”
“Okay… But this is going to hurt,” she said. “I can give you something for the pain.”
“No,” Elara said quietly. “I need to stay clear-headed. I need to talk, still. I can’t forget anything.”
“It’s going to hurt,” Tami repeated.
“I don’t care,” she whimpered.
Tami pursed her lips, concerned, but began to work on her shoulder.
Argon peered over Tami’s shoulder, staring at Elara’s battered and bloodied face. He felt sick, his gut lurching inside him.
“You were stabbed… How did this happen?” Tami asked, trying hard to keep her voice steady. She was a seasoned medic in Polaris, and was used to seeing patients in dire conditions. But it was different, working on her friend.
It hit too close to home.
“A sword,” Elara uttered, breathing hard through the pain as Tami cauterized her wound.
“What happened?”
“I… I hid,” Elara answered, feeling childish and cowardly as she heard her answer out loud. “When I heard them, I panicked. I was going to escape from the window with Helia, but everything happened so fast. Too fast. They heard us. I grabbed Helia and hid under the bed. I hoped they wouldn’t find us…” Elara breathed in sharply as Tami continued to attend to her wound. “He knew we were there. Or at least, he guessed. He stuck his sword through the mattress and it went through my shoulder.”
“Helia?” Tami worried. “Is she—?”
“I had her under me.” Elara’s heart ached as she recalled how Helia shook with fear beneath her.
Argon held Helia closer to him, his eyes locked on Elara. You’re incredible.
“Yun Zeru didn’t know she was there. He wanted the book. He didn’t know about Helia until he saw her…” Elara couldn’t bear to speak of it. Her voice wavered as she continued: “He snatched her from me. I held onto her the best I could… Helia was so scared. I tried so hard to get her back… She was so scared…”
“Oh, Elara,” Tami consoled, brushing her hair back softly.
More tears spilled over. Elara wondered how she still had any more tears left to cry. “She kept calling out to me,” she wept, her face screwing up as she remembered Helia’s confused cries. “She kept calling out, ‘Mama, Mama.’ She couldn’t understand why I was letting that man hurt her. She couldn’t understand why I wasn’t stopping him. I tried… I couldn’t…”
“You did all you could,” Argon told her.
“I know.” Elara closed her eyes mournfully. “But I don’t think she understands…”
“Helia is a smart little girl,” Tami said firmly. “I think she understands better than you give her credit for. She might’ve not understood what was happening, but she knows that you would never want any of that to happen.”
Elara’s stomach twisted, unconvinced of her words. It wasn’t what she had seen, at all. She noticed Helia’s wary glances towards her, and turning away to cling tightly to Argon. It hurt. It stung. She wondered if Helia could ever trust her again. It pained her to even think about.
“He knows that Helia is a Tawer,” Elara said, her eyes meeting Argon’s. “He had no doubt that she was mine. He was going to hurt Helia to make me tell him everything… But then he saw the ring…”
Elara bit her lip. She wasn’t sure why she had held onto the ring, instead of keeping it with Miela or Noiro, along with the rest of the artifacts they found with Helia.
“The family ring,” Argon murmured.
Elara nodded. “He got distracted. He took Helia and kept shaking her, hurting her, asking her who she was. He looked confused.”
“Confused?”
“He said something to himself. ‘Another Tawer,’ he said,” Elara recalled.
Argon frowned.
“It looks like he’s been keeping track of your family members,” Noiro posited, looking at Helia. Elara nodded. “I think so too. He…. He tried to… He hurt her. He began choking her… And I couldn’t…” Elara’s voice trembled. She turned her head to the side, ashamed. She failed to protect her daughter.
“How did you get away?” asked Noiro.
“Helia,” Elara uttered, tears squeezing out the side of her eyes. “Helia saved us.”
“Helia?” Miela was quiet until then. “How?”
“I… I’m not sure.” Elara’s eyes darted quickly to Tami. She didn’t want to reveal what she had seen. She closed her eyes.
Tami had been by her side in the future. She risked her life to help save people during the war. And she had already learned too much while listening to their conversation.
And with Yun Zeru’s attack… It was only a matter of time.
She had to know.
Elara opened her eyes.
“Helia’s eyes rolled back in her head. I thought it was from being strangled… I was so scared, but then…” Elara looked at Helia, who was clutching at Argon’s neck, her wailing slowly ceasing to soft hiccups as he comforted her. “She made water appear.”
“What?”
“Water. It came out from the ground and threw Yun Zeru off balance. I took my chance and grabbed her away from him. We ran… and came here.” She looked at Noiro, grunting in pain as Tami finishing stitching her shoulder. “It was the first place I could think of.”
Noiro didn’t know how to respond.
Water appeared? He looked at Helia warily, and then to Argon, who looked equally shocked. Miela seemed to want to say something, but looked hesitantly at Tami.
They would have time to talk more about that later.
Right now, Elara needed to rest.
He looked back at her. She looked so small, and her body was battered and bruised. It hurt to see her that way. He had raised Elara as a little girl. He was her family. He held her hand tightly, thankful that she was all right. That Helia was all right.
Tami finished bandaging her shoulder and then moved to examine Helia. Thankfully, she escaped with only a few bruises, although they looked like nasty ones. Her windpipe was bruised as well, with the force Yun Zeru used against the toddler. Helia’s voice was a little hoarse, but with some more time to rest, she would make a full recovery.
“All right,” Tami sighed, tidying up her kit. “I’ve taken care of the wounds I can see. Is there anything else that hurts?” Her worried eyes looked over her old friend.
“My muscles… and my head,” Elara managed.
Tami nodded. “It’s no surprise. You’ve suffered major trauma,” she said sadly. “Please, I can give you something for the pain. You need to rest.”
“Leave it here, I’ll take it later,” Elara answered.
Tami nodded, taking out a small bottle and leaving it on the table.
“I’ll help you get cleaned up,” Miela offered, moving towards Elara and helping her stand up. “We need to get this blood off you.”
Elara struggled to get to her feet, looking down at herself. Her shirt was now stiff with dried blood, and she could feel it sticking to her skin. She felt her stomach lurch as she reassessed how much blood she’d lost. She didn’t know she had so much blood in her.
Miela was right.
Argon watched as the two women slowly made their way to the bathroom, the door closing shut behind them. He looked at Helia, who was slowly drifting to sleep in his arms. She was covered in blood, too, but it wasn’t hers. He was so thankful.
“I’ll take her,” Noiro said softly, extending his arms towards Helia. He saw Argon’s troubled face, and could only imagine how scared he must have felt. It was the same way he felt, af
ter all. “I’ll get her cleaned up.
Argon nodded gratefully.
After a few moments, Elara and Miela emerged from the bathroom, Miela supporting Elara’s weight as they shuffled slowly back to the sitting room. Argon rushed over to them, supporting Elara from her other side, and helped put her down onto the soft couch. Her hair was still wet, and he could smell the scented soap on her skin. She was wearing a loose shirt, probably one of Noiro’s, as it was so large on her frame that it hung down to her thighs, and a pair of old pants scrunched up around her legs. He brushed her hair behind her ear. He couldn’t help himself.
“Take the medicine,” Argon told her, moving his hand to her cheek. Elara closed her eyes, leaning her face into his palm.
“Not now, please,” Elara whispered, her voice wobbly as she tried not to put any pressure on her injured shoulder. He couldn’t understand why she sounded like she was begging him. He had only asked her. His heart ached at the sound of her pleading; he could only think of how she must have pleaded with Yun Zeru.
Elara pleaded because she knew she would cave in if he pushed. She wanted to have her wits about her. She was afraid.
“Please,” he said gently. “For Helia.”
Elara bit her lip, and then nodded. Argon brought the bottle close to her lips, tipping it slightly to give her a sip. Elara coughed, feeling the warm liquid slide down her throat. It burned, but it also felt good. Argon pulled her into a tight hug, careful not to put any pressure on her injuries.
“I’m so sorry,” Argon whispered mournfully. His voice was thick as he swallowed back tears. “He was after the book… I left it there with you. He must have been watching…”
“It doesn’t matter,” Elara murmured against his cheek, closing her eyes. “He would have attacked any one of us.”
“I love you, Elara.”
She could feel herself beginning to relax, but she wasn’t sure if it was from the medicine, or from the comfort she found with Argon.
Argon could feel her form begin to relax against him, and he shifted her slowly to lie back down as she drifted to sleep. He gritted his teeth together, turning to look at Miela, who had moved further away to give the two some privacy.
The Elemental Page 24